Tuesday, 12 June 2007

Common Spotted Orchid - Dactylorhiza fuchsii

There were so many purple spotted orchids at Anchor Bottom the other day, it was incredible. There were festoons of them. There were also fragrant orchids, some early pyramidal orchids poking up as well as the one bee orchid i spotted. This is a photo of a particularly large and fine looking specimen i came across. There are also green winged orchids present at the site but they flowered about a month earlier. I didn't have a chance to go out and have a look at them so sadly i missed them. Better luck next year.

4 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Dear Victoria Please find attached photos that i took out my back of what i believe to be a common black spotted orchid i found it growing in a pot that was full of grasses and have looked at a few sites and think that it is an orchid and from what i have read this may be unusual to be growing here in Scotland I thought that this may be of interest to you and would like your opinion as to the variety of flower that is in the photos look forward to hearing from you in the near future Lynette C Lamberton

Dear Lynette, thanks for getting in touch. I think you're right, the photos you've sent me look like a common spotted orchid to me. As far as i can tell only three orchid species have spots on their leaves, the common spotted, the early purple orchid and the broad leaved marsh orchid. But only the common spotted orchid has spots that run lengthways up the leaves (hence the name i guess).

You might want to check the other two species out for comparision, their flowers look fairly different.

Here's a link to the distribution map for the species on the National Biodiversity Network. As you can see it's quite common over most of the UK but it's still quite interesting that it cropped up in a plant pot! Was it in your back garden?